Ruth Maclennan Artist Talk: Treeline
Join Ruth Maclennan for an artist talk hosted by Dr Dominic Paterson, where Ruth will screen and discuss Treeline, a collectively made film compiled from hundreds of hours of footage of forests submitted by people across the world. Treeline will be exhibited at the Advanced Research Centre from April 3-14. Presented in collaboration between The Dear Green Bothy, Thinking Culture, and the ARC Spring Fling.
The Dear Green Bothy | College of Arts | Thinking Culture | ARC Public | ARCSPRING | School of Culture & Creative Arts
Date: Tuesday 11 April 2023
Time: 19:00 - 20:00
Venue: Advanced Research Centre
Category: Exhibitions, Films and theatre, Public lectures, Academic events, Student events
Speaker: Ruth Maclennan
Join Ruth Maclennan for an artist talk hosted by Dr Dominic Paterson, where Ruth will screen and discuss Treeline and her artistic practice. Treeline will be exhibited at the Advanced Research Centre from April 3-14. Presented in collaboration between The Dear Green Bothy, Thinking Culture, and the ARC Spring Fling.
Ruth Maclennan‘s Treeline is a collectively made film compiled from hundreds of hours of footage of forests submitted by people across the world. From a patchwork of contributions (sent in by scientists, ecologists, artists and members of the public alike), Maclennan traces a sinuous green line that stretches from the wild woods of North America to the rainforests of the Amazon to the copses of middle England and the scrublands of Africa, as well as myriad places in-between. Resembling a continuous horizontal travelling shot, Maclennan’s infinite panorama of trees is a vivid reminder of the swathes of green that continue to encircle and nourish the planet, and a powerful emblem of the shared resources and shared futures that bind people together. A paean to the beauty and majesty of trees, Treeline also echoes something of their form — putting out exploratory feelers, then drawing material from multiple sources to create an enveloping, overarching structure that is considerably more than the sum of its parts.
Ruth Maclennan (b. London 1969) is an artist and writer. Her work includes films, multi-channel moving image works, photographs, performances, and writing. Her recent films examine how the climate emergency has irrevocably transformed ways of seeing and understanding landscape and place – both for inhabitants, and as representation.
Maclennan exhibits widely internationally. Since April 2020 she has contributed to the international collective, The Crown Letter, http://crownproject.art/ruth-maclennan/. She is known for her films set in post-Soviet countries, including Call of North, Hero City and Cloudberries, filmed in Arctic Russia (London International Film Festival), Theodosia filmed in Crimea a year before its annexation by Russia (with a Joanna Drew Travel Award), and Capital and Anarcadia filmed in Kazakhstan. Exhibitions include Icebreaker Dreaming (solo, Pushkin House), Anarcadia, (solo, FVU/John Hansard Gallery), Terrapolis, (French School, Athens), State of Mind (London School of Economics), The Body. The Ruin. (Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne). She has a PhD from the Royal College of Art and is Institute Associate at Scott Polar Institute, University of Cambridge. Her films are distributed by LUX <https://lux.org.uk/artist/ruth-maclennan>.
Treeline is co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Forestry England. Supported by John Hansard Gallery, University of Glasgow and Arts Council England.
